


Fading Flame

by ShyWitchling



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Depersonalization, Dreams and Nightmares, Feelings, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, No Beta, Present Tense, Purpose, Slow Build, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-08-23 17:23:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20246524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShyWitchling/pseuds/ShyWitchling
Summary: The Knight is lost in their travels throughout the fading kingdom of Hallownest and struggles to commit to their purpose.Maybe a little moth can light the way?





	1. ...

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction was originally something else entirely, but now it doesn't know what it wants to be. Which in hindsight is kind of fitting.
> 
> So warnings:  
-This fanfiction is very much a mess; I have no clue what is going to happen in it now. It is definitely not my best work.  
-Spoilers for the game Hollow Knight's plot.  
\- Lines in Bold belong to the Game.  
-Grimmchild is lost in the mail, he'll get here when he gets here. XD

**“No Cost too great.”**

_ …_

**“No Mind to think.”**

_…Wait-…_

**“No will to break.”**

_Please-…_

**“No voice to cry suffering.”**

_Wait… please wait- I’m-!_

**“Born of God and Void.”**

_I-…_

**“You shall seal the blinding light that plagues their dreams.”**

_ I will…- just please wait-I’m still here-_

**“You are the vessel.”**

_ I can be that- really! Please-!_

A gentle pale light steps away from the ledge, before it a shadow stands expectant to follow.

It falters. It looks behind it from whence it came. A sibling clings there; a mirrored gaze shared.

** _ …_**

The vessel turns away from its sibling, following the light as intended.

The slam of a large stone door echoes throughout the deep cavern, leaving only a dead sea of darkness.

The quaking of rock follows, the Sibling's grip is slipping-

_ …Please don’t leave me here…_


	2. An Idea Instilled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Knight distracts themself through exploration of the hidden White Palace. Unfortunately they find a secret that only serves to remind them of what they are and what they must do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise for such a late first chapter. Instead of polishing the chapter I originally had, I rewrote it entirely because I hated it. And made it waaaay too long, so I still hate it. Whoops. XD  
Notes:  
\- Grimmchild is still lost in the mail my poor moth son, but he will arrive soon.  
\- The Knight goes through some angst in this chapter relating to their identity, past, and purpose. If trouble in these topics upset you, please know I don't mean to cause any distress and I don't recommend you read the chapter's conclusion.  
\- The lines in single quotation marks and italics are lines from the game.

_ ‘The Pale Court was a wondrous place full of the age's greatest heroes.’_

The Dung Beetle’s words drift in the Knight’s memory as they find themself wandering through the shimmering halls of the White Palace. White leafy ivy hangs neatly along the high chrome ceilings and walls beside tall silver windows, where large bright beams of light flow inside the palace hallway endlessly. Shiny glass orbs containing clusters of fluttering lunaflies sit on slim stands, shining so bright that at a distance the cages are reminiscent of pristine white pearls. There are many of these long halls, all of them noticeably silent as if the palace were unknowingly sleeping soundly in the silence of night, despite the bright light shining outside. The Knight is constantly fighting the urge to run down them with their arms spread like wings; the halls are just so long, stretching for miles with many steel sealed doorways, it was begging to be raced down. But they hold back, respectfully taking the majesty of the palace in.

The exit of the hall takes them to a familiar open area, the heart of the palace where the many branching pathways began. It is an outside area, revealing the bright white fog that encases the whole palace, the divine light that shines everywhere unseen, whilst familiar large roots appear to hold the entire palace in a distant dreamy embrace. The chatter of the Royal Retainers waltzes around the room as they talk in small individual groups, alongside the various faded flowery and fruity perfumes that travel throughout the palace, in the heart mainly consisting of freshly cut roses, apple, and jasmine. Stray soul and dream particles fade slowly in and out of existence like lost ghosts as the Knight journeys to a silver regal bench at the centre, where they try to trace their findings from memory.

Wondrous place was a faithful description of the ancient palace. It is perplexing, it and the memory of bugs within it made immortal through the power of dreams, forgotten by time and space. Is this the real palace, hidden within a sleeping Kingsmould, or simply a memory of it? If it is, is this memory even true or simply a desire of what could have been? Is it all at once?

…The Knight doesn’t know why they are here. They have wandered the palace blindly, as they surely have done the whole kingdom of Hallownest by now, every crevice and corner peered into, every nook and cranny checked, changes marked on their map then checked again for any slither of the alluring unknown now lost to them. They have recently taken up the challenge of making a map of the Palace, at least of the rooms they can get into, if for no other reason than to record its own puzzling existence. Quite a daunting task… without Cornifer’s map they find it a great struggle to mark their own findings, having only their own eyes and calculating memory of passing through the rooms as guidelines each time they finally find a bench to rest briefly. It is messy, faded lines frayed with frustrating imperfection, floating small shapes and stray marks and scattered pins littering the paper. But they’re managing… or at least they like to think they are.

Map updated the Knight journeys once again, heading up the known central tower of the palace. Are they searching for something specifically? If so, they don’t know what it is… in earnest, their purpose has been realised for a while now. They know where they need to go. What they need to do. Why it needs to be done. And yet…

They find themselves in a small room with a tall ceiling, sawblades spinning away on the walls threatening all who dare climb further. The furniture is hidden away by ghostly white cloth. A tall chrome window glares down with the shining light filtering through it, just slightly glistening on the silvery smooth surfaces-

A crack catches the Knight’s eye. The very corner of the small room, hidden away from its tall ceiling of hissing blades, the smooth wall had cracked ever so slightly. Nowhere in the Palace had the Knight seen a damaged wall. It was all clean, ageless, untouched. This was new. Unknown. The Knight launches themselves, their nail striking the wall with three swift slashes, shiny thin stone crumbling with each hit. Then it falls away, revealing a small hole just below the shallow section of ceiling. Leaping into It the Knight looks down a narrow crumbling crawlspace, the jagged stone walls making the hole look as if it were a snarling maw. Peering closer the crawlspace appeared to widen into a passage someways ahead.

An _unexplored_ passage.

The Knight races blindly forward, shivering with excitement as they crawl into the dark crevice before their mind can even think. They hadn’t seen this pathway in their first ascent of the tower; how could their eyes have missed it?! They just couldn’t have, could they? Their eyes are usually sharp… distracted as of late, but sharp as they’d always been. Was it new? It couldn’t have been, they are alone in this palace as far as they know. But the nature of this palace was unknown itself, a memory or dream or real… but everything was the exact same last they were here. Did rooms shift in size and shape here? It sounded brilliant, but what was the point in making a map if the rooms shifted!?

Soon the crawlspace grows, tall walls and ceilings towering over them once again. Before them stands a long tall corridor with the white fog at its end, archways faintly shimmering silver on the ceiling thanks to the Knight’s dimly glowing shell, as bulky castle bannisters set forward a linear pathway. The Knight creeps along the dark hall, eyes focused and nail raised, their careful feather-weight steps echoing in their shell. The ivy has grown wild here, hanging limp and still from the ceiling like ropes of leaves all along the path, barely hiding the cracked chrome walls like ripped archaic curtains.

Suddenly light shines beside the Knight, shimmering brightly but not enough to engulf the corridor, darkness crawling quickly away along the walls and floor. A symbol shines on the wall, bright white lines of light shimmering on a black surface, overlapping then running parallel to one another, forming a large shield-like shape with rounded wings on the whole section of tall wall… Inside this shield was the shape of the Knight’s sibling’s shell... Swiftly averting their eyes, nail gripped tighter, the Knight peers closer at the lines themselves. Lightly poking it with their nail results in a spindly lose thread sticking to their nail, thankfully the symbol remained whole, each line sturdy with multitudes of entwined threads; the symbol was seemingly woven with spider silk.

They have seen similar symbols before; shielding the dreamer’s sleeping bodies, forged in aggression by the dreamers themselves in the resting grounds, one even guarded the slumbering Kingsmould that held this strange palace inside their own head, before the Knight’s own Dream Nail shattered it. The symbols then seemed… somewhat alive, more spell-like, actively bounding the dreamers and the Knight to space, to a state of mind. But here… the symbol seems passive as if it is sleeping, weakened, or merely a warning of sorts. The Knight has an idea of what the symbols mean but refuses to record in their hunter’s journal the meaning until certain. This put a spin on things, the symbol being able to be used passively as well as actively… Or are they just not the one the symbol is being used against?

Leaving the symbol be, the Knight continues down the corridor. Soon the corridor opens into a small balcony area guarded by the small stone bannisters shining though slightly cracked, the light engulfing the whole palace once again shining all around the Knight as the corridor behind them is flooded with darkness. There isn’t much of a view, only a high wall of silver thorns opposite the balcony, with endless white fog smothering whatever lay below or beyond the palace walls. A stone tablet sits on the balcony. When the Knight wanders closer, glowing ghostly writing appears on the surface…

_‘To Witness secrets sealed,_

_one must endure the harshest punishment.’_

…The Pale King, a higher being so elusive in his own kingdom that the average bug of Hallownest had only known of him by mere faith, by acknowledgement of their own free-will, only seeing him through their own self-made idols of worship and the faraway light that shined within the deep dark caverns of the earth alongside a ghostly apple scent, was hiding something himself. Invisible, yet all-seeing, immortal and celestial, an untouchable monarch of pure light and all-knowing mystery, a patriarch willing to sacrifice all for their subjects… some of these blind faiths true, others from a grand façade forged... And he was keeping a secret. An ancient secret unable to be weaved into a false fable of grandeur. The brightest being in all the kingdom and beyond it, worshipped and adored by all without question, with a long shadow following him, had a bigger darkness to hide.

How can the Knight resist such ravenous curiosity?

So, the Knight begins their climb; there is no other path than to climb up the wall beside the balcony. And they fall. They climb back up, only to fall again. And again, and again, and again, and again and again- until finally, they manage to leap with the flap of ghostly monarch wings over the strangely placed sawblade hissing and sliding all over the wall like a famished wild snake. Only to fall again because there’s nowhere to go until they realise there is somewhere to go; they just need to bounce over the wingmould hovering nearby with a well-timed swing of their nail. It’s clearly the right direction because it’s the only direction. After much trial and error, they finally surpass the wall… only to be greeted by a crevice of overgrown wild silvery thorns, with sawblades whirling away. Which they find they also need to bounce on quite precariously.

The path becomes this swift cycle of torture; trial and error and _pain_. Endless drops into white foggy nothingness, then enclosed sharp silver thorns, timed and mistimed swings bounding from wingmould to wingmould, swiftly raised spikes looking to impale, packs of sawblades racing past one another, their blades almost touching. All the while, wild ivy crawls and hangs tauntingly from the ceilings like nooses, and black totems of the Hollow Knight look on, filled with endless soul. The Knight loses themself in it, in the pain, in the resistance to focus, to use this ceaselessly bestowed soul… there is so much of it that it becomes meaningless.

Their nail always _slips_ in their fingers, as if the very void they were made from were melting despite their tight grip. Their monarch wings are constantly clipped by silver fang-like thorns before the Knight has a chance to fly away, dragging them into hundreds of piercing needles big and small all over their body again and again and again. But the Knight doesn’t stop, no matter how many times they are stabbed, impaled, sliced, _drowned_, no matter how many abyssal screams the Knight cries, they refuse to stop. They need to know the King’s secret. They need to know what was so important that he hid it away behind all this pain. They need answers, any answers to anything at this point. But the determination to go on doesn’t make the torture hurt any less.

They grow numb, deaf, blind, their body moving possessed in an endless loop of constant pain as it bubbled void from beneath their shell, from their eye-holes boiling, constant mistakes again and again and again and again- the silhouette of their tall powerful sibling, the perfect sibling, the trained chosen vessel peering down at them every time they fall, stance unmoving, face unchanging, eyes unfeeling, uncaring, merciless, _hollow, pure void_-

It’s only when the corpses of two Kingsmoulds lay at their feet the Knight wakes from their trance.

A similar shield symbol from the path’s beginning shines, towering over the Knight glaring threateningly bright, covering the whole of the tall wall of the open hall the Knight finds themselves in. The Knight can easily see a royal court waltzing around this huge darkened empty room with bounties of food on cloth-covered tables plenty in evening balls courtesy of the ruling higher beings. Instead of rounded wings this symbol is much rounder and mythically sun-like, sharper angles of silk meeting at the centre like an open mouth of snarling thorny teeth. Their sibling’s shell once again sits at the very top of the symbol, enclosed in a bubble above the mouth… the Knight has clearly reached the end. They are finished, finally. No more torment, no cuts, stabs, falling, _judgement_… just… restful _bliss_…

It takes a long moment of gazing dreamily to the floor for the Knight to finally move forward, bubbles of void escaping their scarred pounding shell. The two Kingsmoulds have long since sublimated, from corpses to void particles floating away harmlessly. At the far end of the hall, under a wall of silver thorns, a pale light shines down a small narrow passageway. The Knights feather-light steps echo in the big hall as they walk closer to it, following the pale light and ghostly faded scent of apple... the King’s dark secret awaits.

…It’s a short passage, but for the Knight, it seems to grow longer with every step.

The passage leads to large sheltered palace balcony, slender pillars with crowns at their peak reach up to support the tall ceiling covered with silver rose-scented flora, some of it so overgrown it dangles down in long thin vines. The floor and stone bannisters shimmer silver in the endless white light from outside the palace, there is a gap in the fence where the Knight assumes unseen stairs are-

_ …_

Looking out to the endless white fog of this dream realm, standing straight yet at ease, shadowless by his own pale glow, he stands. The Pale King. Looking unnerved by the nothingness, perhaps lost in it or his own mind, either content in a daydream or debating heavily in a furious war of passing thoughts. The Knight can’t see his face; only his turned back. The chosen vessel stands close beside him, a small being alike the Knight, from before they were trained to perfection. Before they were sacrificed.

It was a memory. The secret the Pale King wanted to hide in this dream was a memory, of him and the perfect sibling.

The Knight watches the memory unfold, invisible and forgotten. Their body is frozen as a dull ache slowly builds in their chest, but their shell is thoughtless. It doesn’t feel real. A trick of their eye maybe, or a passing dark thought. But they see it, blindingly bright with harsh crystal clarity. The Pale King and the chosen vessel staring off into a bright white light, together, their backs to the Knight. And then the king looking down at his spawn, looking at the young hollow being that had stood by and watched the Knight suffer the journey here, his gaze longingly focused on it. The vessel looking back, up at the King. An unspoken conversation, acknowledgement, and secret only they share.

The secret that doomed the kingdom. Such an innocent desire of what could have been: a king and his heir, mentor and apprentice, _father and child_. For the memory’s time, what could still be. The thousand-yard shadow it cast, drowned corpses under a black sea; the Pale King, for a second, was untouched. He ignored it. Forgot about it. About them. All of them. _All of us._

For a moment, the doomed king for this chosen vessel felt… _something_. For the walking corpse of a child he killed.

And the vessel returned it wholeheartedly. Only for a moment; but a moment was all it took.

** ‘You are free of such blemishes. You could contain that thing inside.’**

…Could they? The words that suddenly spoke in the Knight’s shell were sharp, like the clear ring of a bell, motherly yet chilling and distant… they didn’t know what to feel for that meditating higher being of Root if anything at all... It was made clear what she feels for them -_Far it walks to find me. Did it seek my aid?_ _Seek your aid in its occurrence, replacement. So it can access a mind? Then the seals shall break before its blade_-.

They feel nothing for the Pale King. They probably should, if they were an ordinary bug, but they don’t. He was a now a disturbed rotting corpse hunched below the throne of the White Palace, high up, alone and abandoned, forgotten in the central tower. The throne the Knight had dislodged him from, had sat on so unknowingly at the time, but now without a whisper of regret… but without satisfaction either.

It doesn’t escape that Knight that, in another unreachable branch of time where different choices were made, they might have had a life here with these higher beings. Where they would race down the halls with their hundreds of siblings, probably cared for by reluctant Royal Retainers, trained to be a true royal knight of Hallownest. They would have had a name. An identity. The life the memory standing in front of them so clearly desired… but even that life might not have been possible with those different choices, impossible still as the blazing light would have only burned brighter, a fast wild-fire destroying a defenceless kingdom, this supposed other life cut short… a fire currently on-going, that the Knight needs to stop. They need to focus on their mission and not get lost in their own thoughts…

This pale court… it could have been, but it is not the Knight’s home. It is the home of once-great saviours and ever-loyal servants, now either dead or lifelessly immortal, once magnificent but now overgrown with silver ivy and the ghostly whispers of what was or what could have been. Where crowds once gathered in honour of their king, where family was founded, heroes born.

_ ‘…Looking at you now, I can easily imagine you standing amongst them.’_

…But the Knight can’t imagine it, as it is impossible now. They never will stand which such heroes, the heroes were dead; and the knight was not born here. They were made. Not a hero of light, but a tool of void. They are nothing and they don’t feel anything, don’t need anything.

_ ‘I enjoy the company. Not that you seem the talkative sort.’_

They were made for one purpose. They must not distract themself from it any longer with pointless exploration and play pretend thoughts and feelings of what some dead child once craved, once felt, once needed.

_ ‘If I didn't welcome you, I'd never have anyone to share my happiness with.’_

They were not the young bug that drowned long ago, the owner of the shell they haunt. They were voiceless nothingness forged into the likeness of a being. A cold walking casket imitating its’ dead prisoner.

_ ‘Le'mer, such great compassion.’_

They’ve felt nothing for the bugs they met, their causes, their wants, desires, happiness. They can’t feel anything, not for anyone they’ve helped…

_ ‘Thanks for all your help, my friend. For a tiny bug you set a valiant example.’_

They aren’t a bug, nor a beast. They are nobody. Nothing. Not he nor her, only _it._

_ ‘You start singing and I'll join in. I bet you have a b-b-beautiful singing voice!’_

It can’t speak... It can’t like nor hate nor change its’ fate.

_ ‘Let us enjoy the old stagways of this kingdom together a little longer.’_

It can’t feel joy, excitement, fear, sorrow, anger, regret, rejection, confusion, loss_, frustration, abandonment, unwanted-_

_ ‘perhaps by helping you along your path, I have redeemed myself... if only a little.’_

_-empathy nor regret. _It doesn’t feel anything -It can’t feel anything- _I can’t feel anything for any of you._

_ ‘Mercy is a fine thing, but you and she agree this must be done. Be brave, friend.’_

_…_

There is nothing but a blinding white fog surrounding the Knight. The memory is no more, mere dream bubbles floating away, yet there is no reaction. Just staring ahead unflinchingly into blank whiteness, the dull ache now a gaping hole, shell now thudding heavily with the watery beats of a void-drowned heart that does not belong to the vessel that holds it.

A pretty spider wearing a crimson coat stands before it, looking at it intently, speaking to it carefully, her mask glowing like a halo, her needle and thread tucked away trustingly.

** _‘Such darkness gives me hope. Within it, I see the chance of change.’_ **

The Knight does not see anything. It does not feel anything. It does not need anything. It cannot change anything. It only knows the idea instilled to it, the mission it was made for. It itself is nothing else.

It cannot be anything else.

** _ ‘The fate of our Kingdom, our Hallownest... that future belongs to you now.’_ **

…

The vessel leaves the central tower, the white palace soon after. The silk symbols, _seals of binding_, lose their shimmer as darkness devours the path of pain once more. An unfinished map is left abandoned on the floor of the large empty balcony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this chapter.
> 
> I know this was very long; for the next one I will try to shorten the word-length.  
I really struggled with the layout in this chapter so I'm sorry if it seems clunky or incomprehensible. If anyone has any tips for the layout of chapters I'll be grateful!
> 
> The reason this chapter took so long is because in addition to re-writing it; I completed Path of Pain in the game just to get that authentic experience to re-write it. I hated it, and I think I've blocked the memory of it. I'm also busy in real life, which has made writing anything difficult lately.  
The lines at the chapter's start and conclusion were taken from the following characters in order: The Dung Defender, The White Lady, Elderbug, Eternal Emilitia, The Grey Mourner, Cloth, Myla, The Last Stag, Oro, Quirrel. 
> 
> If you believe I should tag something differently let me know. Feedback and criticism is very much welcome.


End file.
